Welcome to the School of Unfulfilled Potential
Every horror movie promises to teach us something. The Babadook taught us that grief is a monster you can’t bury. Hereditary taught us that family secrets can really tear your head off. Boarding School teaches us… well, mostly that you can’t fix a bad script by adding a haunted house, two dead kids, and an inexplicable World War II subplot.
Written and directed by Boaz Yakin (Remember the Titans, which makes this even more confusing), Boarding School is a psychological horror that tries to be deep, disturbing, and metaphorical — but mostly feels like watching a midterm project from the world’s most ambitious film student. It wants to be about trauma, repression, identity, and fascism. What it is about, functionally, is a kid in a dress trapped in the world’s least educational boarding school.
By the end, I didn’t know if I should feel scared, sad, or just request a transfer.
Plot: The Breakfast Club from Hell
Jacob Rathbone (Luke Prael) is a 12-year-old boy who’s afraid of the dark, which is understandable since he’s living in a film that has no idea what tone it’s going for. After being caught dancing in his dead grandmother’s dress (because nothing says “coming-of-age” like channeling your deceased Jewish matriarch), his stepfather and mother decide the best solution is to exile him to a creepy boarding school in the woods.
This boarding school is run by Dr. Sherman (Will Patton, radiating the energy of a man who regrets saying yes to this role) and his wife, who alternate between quoting Bible verses and screaming at children. Their idea of education is corporal punishment and repression — which, to be fair, is about 70% of the horror genre’s boarding schools.
Jacob’s classmates are a collection of human metaphors disguised as children: autistic Elwood, burn victim Phil, the Tourette’s-afflicted Frederic, and Christine — a manipulative rich girl who looks like she wandered in from a Pretty Little Liars audition. There are also twins, because no boarding school horror is complete without twins staring ominously at walls.
Then the deaths start happening. First Frederic dies (possibly autoerotic asphyxiation, because this film is desperate to be edgy), then Elwood mysteriously vanishes, and before long we’re knee-deep in murder, madness, and moral lessons that make Scooby-Doo look nuanced.
The Tone: Part Horror, Part Hallmark, All Confusion
It’s hard to describe Boarding School’s tone because it changes genres every ten minutes like a bored Netflix user. One minute it’s a psychological drama about gender identity, the next it’s a murder mystery, and five minutes later it’s a revenge thriller with Nazi flashbacks.
Yes, you read that right.
For reasons known only to the director and possibly his therapist, the film keeps cutting to Jacob’s grandmother hiding from Nazis during World War II — sharpening her teeth with a nail file and ripping out a German soldier’s throat. These scenes are meant to symbolize inherited trauma and generational resilience, but mostly they just make you wish Inglourious Basterds would kick in the door and rescue us all.
By the third act, the film goes completely off the rails, burning down the boarding school (literally), introducing a poison subplot, and turning Jacob into a pint-sized vigilante who avenges wrongs with a glass of Cabernet and a psychotic smile. If this movie were a student, it’d be the one who aced creative writing but failed every logic exam.
Luke Prael: The Boy Who Tried His Best
Credit where it’s due: Luke Prael gives an impressive performance for a young actor trapped in a script that feels like it was written during a séance. He’s earnest, haunted, and manages to make Jacob’s gender-bending exploration feel genuine even when the movie itself doesn’t know how to handle it.
Prael’s Jacob is a kid desperate to understand himself while surrounded by adults who clearly need professional help more than he does. His moments of vulnerability — dressing in his grandmother’s clothes, facing bullies, or trying to find a sliver of safety in chaos — are surprisingly touching. Unfortunately, every time the film gives him emotional depth, it immediately undercuts it with another murder or a monologue about inherited Holocaust rage.
You can practically see Prael thinking, “Why is this scene about poison now?”
Will Patton: Tenure Denied
Poor Will Patton. A great character actor known for bringing quiet menace to roles, he spends most of this movie looking like he’s calculating the minutes until craft services opens. His Dr. Sherman is supposed to be sinister, but instead of terrifying, he feels exhausted — the kind of villain who might murder you but only after a nap.
His wife, played by Tammy Blanchard, at least seems to understand the assignment: she goes full banshee. She screams, stabs, and struts through the house like a PTA mom possessed by The Exorcist. Together, they make a perfect dysfunctional duo — more American Gothic than American Horror Story.
Unfortunately, the script doesn’t give them motivations so much as monologues, so they spend most of the film explaining the plot to each other like a pair of ghosts trying to remember their lines.
The Supporting Cast: Archetypes Anonymous
The other kids exist mostly as cannon fodder and symbolism. There’s the burn victim (trauma), the autistic boy (innocence), the Tourette’s kid (chaos), and Christine (every femme fatale ever). Nadia Alexander’s Phil at least brings some spark — she’s the film’s only character who feels remotely alive. But even she can’t escape the pacing, which lurches between soap opera and snuff film.
Christine, meanwhile, is a masterclass in bad writing. She’s a sociopath, a seductress, a murderer, a masochist, and — apparently — a motivational speaker for preteen nihilists. Her dialogue swings wildly between “I love you, Jacob” and “Let’s try erotic strangulation.” If there were an award for tonal whiplash, she’d win it.
Themes: Where Symbolism Goes to Die
Boaz Yakin clearly wanted Boarding School to be more than a horror movie. He wanted it to be about something. The problem is, he wanted it to be about everything.
Gender identity? Check. Generational trauma? Check. Religious repression, child abuse, fascism, sexual awakening, revenge, the cyclical nature of evil? Check, check, check.
It’s like someone dumped all of Freud’s notes into a blender and hit “puree.”
By the end, Jacob becomes a mini avenger — poisoning his cruel stepfather at dinner while his mother screams in horror. It’s meant to be a moment of empowerment, mirroring his grandmother’s violent resistance. But when your “empowerment” involves poisoning your family while dressed like a homicidal choirboy, it’s hard to feel inspired.
If The Shining is about losing your mind, Boarding School is about losing your audience.
The Horror: Mildly Startling at Best
For a movie that bills itself as horror, Boarding School is about as scary as a parent-teacher conference. There are no real scares, just the occasional dimly lit hallway and some light strangulation. The pacing is so slow that by the time someone dies, you’re just relieved something’s happening.
The creepiest part isn’t the murders or the ghosts — it’s the moral confusion. Are we supposed to cheer for Jacob’s revenge? Feel sympathy for Christine? Question the ethics of parents outsourcing murder contracts for their kids? Or are we just supposed to nod sagely and pretend this all means something profound about inherited suffering?
Spoiler: it doesn’t.
Final Grade: F for “Find Another School”
Boarding School had the potential to be a fascinating exploration of trauma and identity through a gothic lens. Instead, it’s a mess of mismatched tones, half-baked metaphors, and confused morality wrapped in sepia lighting.
It’s like someone tried to make The Others, Dead Poets Society, and Schindler’s List all at once — and then dropped the camera down a flight of stairs.
If you’re looking for horror that makes you think, there are better options. If you’re looking for unintentional comedy, questionable parenting, and an ending so morally baffling it deserves its own ethics seminar, congratulations — enrollment is open at Boarding School.
Rating: 3 out of 10 sharpened dentures.
Because sometimes the real horror isn’t the darkness. It’s realizing you’ve spent two hours watching a movie that doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up.
